


A beautiful day

by Inkgirl



Category: NCIS
Genre: Cancer, Character Death, Health Issues, I am very sorry, Not Beta Read, Sadness, Tragedy, grammar mistakes, so much, why did I write this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 15:11:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2626307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkgirl/pseuds/Inkgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony never expected that it could end like this.<br/>He expected everything: Dying by a bullet, a knife, of course on a case.</p><p>He would bet on revenge or even burglars.</p><p>Originally, he hoped to die from age, peaceful.</p><p>He took everything as possibility: Murder, an explosion, a bullet gone wrong, a car accident.</p><p>He was prepared for everything.</p><p>Except this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A beautiful day

Tony never expected that it could end like this.

 

He expected everything: Dying by a bullet, a knife, of course on a case.

 

He would bet on revenge or even burglars.

 

Originally, he hoped to die from age, peaceful.

 

He took everything as possibility: Murder, an explosion, a bullet gone wrong, a car accident.

 

He was prepared for everything.

 

Except this.

 

Tony watches enough TV to know how people react to such an information.

Some scream and destroy half the office, others fight the truth and don’t stop shaking their head.

Others just stand up and go.  
The most cry.

Tony does nothing of this.

“You have cancer.”

 

And Tony does nothing.

He doesn’t cry or scream.  
He doesn’t freak out, he believes the doctor.

Tony just sits there and looks at his hands. “How long do I have?”  
He doesn’t ask why, like most.  
He doesn’t ask why life is so unfair, why he, why why why.

„Half a year I suppose. Of course we can do something, chemo therapy.”  
Tony still looks at his hands. They look weird.  
Why didn’t he see it before?  
They are calloused from work and have deep hand lines.

 

Fortune-teller say the line on your thumb is the lifeline. His own is long. Why isn’t he allowed to use it, the whole long line?  
Why does it break in the middle?  
These are weird questions, exactly like his weird hands.  
“But it won’t help. I just have more time.”

 

The doctor nods slowly. „But I would give you the advice to do so; you could win like half a year.”

 

Tony doesn’t allow him to explain more. He knows the important things. “Thanks, doc.” He gets up and goes.  
It doesn’t interest him.  
What is still important in a moment like this?

 

When he stands in the parking lot, he can’t remember how he got there.  
When he sits in the car, he asks himself how he closed the door without hearing it snap.  
He grips the wheel of his beloved car with both hands, the dark leather is warm from the air and smooth and absolutely normal.  
He never paid attention to that.  
It isn’t frost what creeps from the wheel into his fingers, his arms and his body.  
It is ice, because he knows frost, frost comes with fear.  
He never felt ice, and ice is worse.  
Ice is cold and freezes without a spring in sight.  
Frost comes and goes; it’s clammy and leaves him shivering. Ice paralyzes.  
Tony hates ice, he hates frost, he hates winter and cold and snow.  
He freezes.

Tony can’t move anymore, can’t move a muscle.  
Every limb is tense, but the frost-shaking doesn’t come. Probably he will never get rid of it.

 

He can’t move his hand to the key. He can’t press the gas pedal, even his toes are numb and cold.

He just sits there, stares at his hands and notices that they are different from before. Now they shake and are pale. They feel cold and clammy.

How long it takes to take back control over his muscles he can’t say. He isn’t frozen anymore, the ice has sunken deep into him. What freezes now is his stomach and his torso and his head and every breath seems colder.

 

The cellphone brings him out of his numbness. He takes it automatically, answers and says: “DiNozzo?”

He has to repeat it to be understandable.  
“DiNozzo, where are you?! We have a case!“  
„Yeah boss. “ Another repeat, because his first attempt stays silent.  
“Tony? Everything alright?”  
“Yeah boss.“ Tony clears his throat. „I’ll be there soon.“  
No answer, hung up like always. The cellphone lands not peppy on the passenger seat, Tony lays it down, very gentle and careful.  
Then he grabs his key mechanically, starts the car and drives.  
Is it good to drive with shock? He should ask Ducky.  
Though he drives, as good as always, as normal as always. Although, nothing is normal anymore.

Although the sun is shining and the November is pretty warm and it is a beautiful day.

 

He stops his car, enters the lift and blinks a lot until the tears in his eyes are not anymore.  
He shakes his head three times, not because of disbelief, but to get rid of the empty look in his eyes that he can literally feel on himself.  
When the lift stops, Tony is the same again.

And the life goes on.

Gibbs shoos him around, he refuels the truck, he makes sketches, he speaks with witnesses.

And now the corpses mean more than ever.  
It won’t take long time till he is one too.

 

The corpse is a woman, a pretty one. She has long, blond hair and a child on her chest. Both are dead and Tony asks himself how you can be that stupid to kill somebody. There are enough possibilities to die on this world.  
His eyes go over blood and skin and eyes and they are empty and look like stars, because they are as far away as them.  
The child frightens him.

It is small and Tony doesn’t know if it’s a boy or maybe a girl.

It has the same hair as its mother, but short and bloody and Tony asks himself if there is a reason for the death of little children.  
Is there something like a scale?

If the weight on one sight doesn’t suffice then on the other side has to be something taken away. Balance is horrible, decides Tony.  
When balances means that he has to sit in a room, with a dead child and a dead mother and death breathing down on him, whilst Gibbs and Ziva and McGee run around and curious people are standing outside, then he wants to take tons, heavy tons, and throw them on the scale so it breaks and there is no more reason to sit here.

Nevertheless, when Gibbs addresses him, Tony turns off his eyes and smiles anyway. He turns off his ears too, so he doesn’t have to hear the blood dripping on the carpet.

He carries on.

McGee gets stupid puns and a Bambino.

Ziva gets allusions and a correction.

Gibbs gets babbling and an innocent grin.

Tony himself gets annoyed looks and a hit on his head.

And a story from Ducky to which he listens the first time, without interrupting, at least until Gibbs comes and does it for him.

The case is solved, like everyone. It was the father, a marine, and Tony hates him from the first moment. Because he looks like him, he has green eyes and brown hair and even Abby sees it. Tony asks himself if the scale got something wrong.  
Everything is different for Tony. He can’t, despite effort, just stand here, beside the dead.

Not cover up everything with a few jokes. So he lets it be and works in silent.  
Everybody gets something from him. Everything is like always, but for Tony with the doubled meaning.  
The innocent grin for Gibbs is more honest. The correction for Ziva is serious.  
The Bambino for McGee is a pet name.  
The kiss on Abbys forehead lasts longer.  
The nod for Vance is earnest.  
The attention for Ducky is sincere.  
Even the superior grin for Palmer is friendlier.

At home it is different too. He lives alone, in a flat he likes and knows. Now he even asks himself if the TV always stood in this corner.  
He sits in front of it and listens, but the TV is off because Tony can’t stand the laughing strangers in it.  
He thinks about his plans.

He loves every second of his life, exactly how it is.

He doesn’t want to change anything.

He wants to enjoy the time how he likes to.  
And if they know it nothing will be the same.

So he doesn’t tell them, not in all the time.  
It isn’t necessary. Not for them, not for him.

He keeps his file closed, avoids controlling checkups. He doesn’t have family to be blamed for it when he isn’t here anymore.  
When it starts to be difficult to sprint he lets Ziva take the run.  
When it starts to be difficult to hold his weapon steady, he props it up and shoots then.  
Nobody notices anything.  
When it start to be difficult on the field he works more often in the office and sorts files and pencils.

When the pain starts, after a quarter year, he gets a bottle morphine from the hospital and everything stays normal.  
And every evening he sits in his flat, on the couch, like always, and can’t gather up to start a movie, like always, or turn on the lights, or get a beer.  
So he stays seated, doesn’t move and listens into the silence.

 

The TV stays off, cause Tony watches the movies now in this head, every scene, while he listens to Gibbs and McGee and Ziva and Jenny and Kate. He asks himself if Kate could have known, everything. Shouldn’t you feel it, when it ends? At least a warning. But Tony understands that this way is better. It’s short, and painless, a smooth break. Without scars and edges and jags.

When the spring approaches, Tony knows it can’t take long anymore.  
The more snow melts the more ice settles in his body.  
The work on field stops fully, he sits in the office and clings to the last thing what’s left from his job and his life, he works on files and notes, helps Abby and Ducky and still everything stays calm.

Tony misses lifting a gun, he misses the adrenalin, he misses Gibbs’ tense face on an observation, he misses Ducky and Palmer losing way, he misses Ziva sprinting like a professional; he misses McGee babbling about computer, even on field.  
And increasingly he feels Gibbs‘ looks when he thinks Tony doesn’t notice.

He feels Zivas critical undertone, he feels McGees confusion and Abby raised eyebrows, he feels Palmers head tilt and Duckys frown.  
“What’s going on, DiNozzo?”, asks Gibbs on a day in march and Tony has known that the question will come. He cramps around the computer mouse, grins, and hopes to look in the right direction, to Gibbs, cause he will notice when Tony doesn’t fixates him and his eyes don’t work properly anymore.  
“Nothing.”, he says, like always, but he knows his boss won’t believe him, not today.  
What Gibbs doesn’t know is that the pain today is worse than usually, that he has taken extra morphine in the morning and his limbs are numb because of it and his head feels packed in cotton wool and the pain is there nevertheless.

The half full bottle morphine is in his backpack, cause in the morning he had this feeling that he would need it today, necessarily. He used it already, it’s past noon and in the lunchbreak he didn’t get a burger from the cute cashier but sat shaking on the toilet and tried to take morphine without pouring it or giving in the wish to throw it on the wall together with everything left in his stupid, unfair, just unfair life.

 

„Tony!“ Gibbs gets annoyed, he knows it, and it takes more effort to lift his head than it should.  
Tony knows his eyes are dull and his hands are shaking, so he puts them on his knees and tries a grin, a better one than before.  
But when Gibbs approaches him and hauls him up on his arm and the touch burns like fever on his skin he knows that it’s over, the good time.

 

„Don’t ruin me this boss, please!“, he says and hopes that Gibbs leaves him alone and he know too that Gibbs won’t do that, not until he knows the truth.

“I take you to Ducky. I’ve had enough with your excuse from having a cold, it has last too long. I want you on field again and if you won’t go to a doctor you go to Ducky.”

Tony takes his time to pick up his bag so he doesn’t get dizzy and he takes his time to follow Gibbs into the lift so he doesn’t start sweating from exertion.

And before everything he takes his time to look again at Ziva and McGee without the looks he will get later without a doubt.  
“Come-on, DiNozzo!”

He plods to the lift and he presses the button and just waits for the moment Gibbs presses the stop and tries to make him talk.  
Soon the light becomes blue and Tony can’t fetch a word or a grin but just stands there and looks straight ahead and presses his lips together so that his legs don’t give out under him.

But when Gibbs faces him and looks at him and grabs his arm he groans in pain cause his whole body aches and even Gibbs’ look aches.  
Immediately his boss lets him go.

„Tony, you tell me now what’s wrong! I see that you know it. You can tell me right now or Ducky will.”

Tony stays silent and averts his eyes.

Gibbs sighs. “Your loss. But don’t complain laterr if Ducky discovers a venereal disease!”

On every other moment Tony would grin broadly, but today not even that works and of course Gibbs notices this too, frowns and unlocks the lift.  
When he exits, his legs are shaking and Gibbs frown deepens minutely.

Fortunately Palmer isn’t here, Tony has to sit on a table and shudders with the thought that soon he won’t sit here but lie there like the corpse on the table beside him. The table is cold and Tony feels frozen.

When Ducky checks him over Tony stays calm and Gibbs crosses his arms when no protest comes.  
As soon as Ducky is finished he sighs. “Tony, I think you should go to hospital, really. You are sick and I am pathologist and no doctor and I don’t have the material to do more.”

„Yeah Ducky, I know.“, says Tony and his voice isn’t calm and of course Gibbs and Ducky look suspicious.  
“I already was in a hospital, last year, in November.”  
“No virus stays that long, Tony.”, says Ducky and comes closer.  
„I know.“, repeats Tony and fumbles on his bag to put the bottle of morphine on the table.

 

No need to say anything, he knows Ducky will recognize it and he believes Gibbs knows it too.  
“Tony my boy, are you addicted to morphine?” Ducky asks startled and Tony can’t stop his smile cause he knows everything indicates this exactly.  
Gibbs comes closer threatening and Tony notices the raised hand, ready for the worst hit on the head ever.  
But this would knock him from the table, Tony knows that, cause he can’t really hold himself up yet, so he raises defensive a hand and chokes out the word he hates so much, the word to blame on his condition. “Cancer.”  
The hand sinks immediately and Gibbs turns away and Ducky sucks in air.  
Tony smiles tired and just wants to sleep and never wake up again.

“Oh my boy, my dear dear boy!”, says Ducky shaken and takes his cold hand and Duckys is warm and kind of unreachable simply because it’s warm and wrinkles like Tony’s will never ever.  
„I’m sorry.“, says Tony and Gibbs turns around immediately to face him.  
“You don’t apologize, DiNozzo, didn’t I tell you?!”, he growls and disappears from the Pathology.

 

Tony looks after him and knows it isn’t Gibbs’ fault that he feels cold now and empty and just so tired.  
„He doesn’t mean it Tony, he just doesn’t know how to deal with it.“, says Ducky quietly and Tony nods and stands and goes upstairs again, but not without pressing Duckys hands on time more.

 

Upstairs everything has changed. The office is silent. The most are gone, his team isn’t.  
Abby is there too and hugs him, but not pressing and strong like always but gentle as if he is unbelievable fragile and it hurts most because Tony feels it is very true.

So he just lets his bag slide on the floor and hugs her back and feels her sobbing into his shoulder. “Tony, Tony, Tony.” she says so quietly that just he can hear it and he smiles and kind of enjoys it that he doesn’t have to pretend he could do everything and be strong like always, as if everything would be perfect and his life still normal.

When he turns he notices that Gibbs isn’t here.

He knows why and isn’t disappointed, for it means that Tony means enough for him that he feels helpless.  
Ziva hugs him too and she is able not to cry like Abby standing beside them, still sobbing.  
„How long do you have? “ McGee roughly asks and Tony remembers the moment when he asked the same question.  
“Maybe one or two months.”

Abby cries really now and Tony doesn’t know how to help when he is the reason why.  
So McGee does it for him and looks at him with this look Tony wanted to avoid.  
Everybody looks at him like that, so sad and desperate and unbelieving and mad and pitying.  
Tony picks up his bag when Ziva lets him go.

„I quit.“, he says and has to smile when he notices that he never would have said these worlds voluntary. He lays down badge and gun and leaves everything here what belongs here but him too, his tackler and his mug and he just takes Gibbs’ medals with him.  
„I’m home if you need me.“  
When he attempts to go McGee grabs his arm. “No chemo?” Tony shakes his head and McGee nods. Looks like he’s finally grown up.

The next days blur.

Tony was right it really ends soon.  
He feels it in his bones and in his muscles and in his limbs and in his head, in his whole body, which is never really able anymore to get out of his bed.

The pain increases too.  
He’s thankful for Ducky and Palmer bringing medication and he’s always glad when his friends show up, even when he doesn’t notice it cause some days his eye sight blurs so much that he doesn’t know if Abby is here or Ducky.

His whole life blurs.  
Since long ago he isn’t sure if he awake or dreams or if it’s day or night. It hurts and everything is dull and cold and loud, too loud, cause the voices in his head are screaming, they are screaming at him, they scream his name and Kate’s name too. He feels closer to Kate than to all the other, cause everybody else is so far away and Tony asks himself if his eyes look like stars too, like the eyes of the dead woman.

 

The fog in his brain clears one time when his father drops by but just long enough to say goodbye.  
April flies by and Tony regrets that he didn’t trick anyone but he just remembers that once in a night when he’s awake and clear and this disappears very fast when he falls asleep again.  
He feels like he has fever, everything hurts and aches and feels heavy and hot.  
Gibbs never shows up, believes Tony, cause sometimes he sees him in one or two dreams but even in them he’s not sure if they are really dreams.  
However it should be embarrassing cause since he’s so gone he says everything out loud what comes in his mind, if it’s his first kiss or a squirrel he saw in the park once.  
When he comes to consciousness again nothing got better cause he’s shaking and it’s too hot, so it he doesn’t mind the thin blanket. But the ice is there, even now, it’s heavy and cold and doesn’t cool him down at all.

 

Tony knows now that it can’t take long anymore cause it hurts but he’s kind of floating in a warm fog, even if Ducky hasn’t injected the morphine yet. 

And that somebody is in his room he notices just a few minutes after looking at the ceiling.  
How much he wishes to react like always, just jumping up, grabbing his gun and aiming, with flashing eyes and adrenalin in his blood.

But everything he can do is dropping his head to the side so he can recognize the man standing in his room.  
Now he is sure that this isn’t a dream when he finally sees Gibbs and he knows too that this is now the end. Gibbs has a feeling for perfect timings and that he is here just has to mean that Tony dies today.  
He asks himself if Gibbs knows it and has to smile when he answers the stupid questions for himself. Of course Gibbs knows, he wouldn’t be here if not.

 

„Gibbs.“ It his his very first word since weeks and he smiles for he can still speak.  
“Tony.” No impersonal Dinozzo anymore and Tony is glad.

 

„You really should have spoken up sooner.“ It sounds like an accusation and it is one. Tony grimaces.  
“Sorry…Boss.” More he cannot say, there are no words left in his fuzzy brain and on his numb tongue. Gibbs sits on the edge of the bed.  
“Don’t speak.”, he shushes him. “Tony… I don’t know what to do. I tried everything, I searched for chemos real helping and doctors who research but those are idiots and they say you’re gonna die.” Gibbs looks clear to him, the first clear form he can see since months, and he feels the touch on his hands which are pale and shaking and cold and Gibbs’ are warm and calloused and tanned and Tony knows that his where like this, long time ago.  
Tony smiles, grins even, brighter. Of course, Gibbs doesn’t give up. But even for him there is a time to let go. Voluntarily.  
“Than..ks.”, he says and is happy. “But… Boss… It’s enough. You… can do it…. Without me.“  
The rasping cracking voice he talks with slows him. He wishes he could use his voice a last time.   
Gibbs shakes his head repeatly.

 

„You’re my best man, Tony. No, that won’t work. That just won’t work.”  
Gibbs grabs Tonys hand and it doesn’t hurt anymore.

Finally.  
Tony sighs. It will be over soon.  
“Of course… it will work. …could make… everything happen…. Right?”  
“You were there too.”  
“And… before? Before Baltimore? You… did it before.“  
„Wasn’t the same.“  
„Carry on Gibbs. For… the team. And… you. And for Jenny….. And Kate…. And soon… for me too.“  
„I will look after them, I promise Tony. For good.”  
“Thank you.” His voice trails off.

 

Tony feels it, it ends, now, here, in this moment.

 

„Can you… get me something? I… want to show you. In… the living room. Under the sofa…. Please.“

Gibbs has to go, now. He can’t see him now, not when he’s dying.

Gibbs nods and Tony is relieved. He smiles at him, as broad as he can manage it, shows his teeth and lets his eyes wrinkle, a last laugh for the man who was always by his side.

His boss leaves and Tony sinks back, looks at the ceiling and can’t stand the color.

 

He looks out of the window and sees that today is a beautiful day, that the sun shines, through his window, in his face, and he loves it.  
It’s like a blast from the past, sun on his skin and a smell of flowers around him, even when it’s just a present from Abby, standing on a table, and not the real thing.  
Tony smiles, he has to take this smell with him, for good, he won’t forget to take the smell.

 

When Gibbs comes back, the room is empty.  
The sun shines on the bed and Tony is still there, but gone too, far far away, Gibbs sees it when he looks into empty eyes.

 

The box with his medals in the right hand and a testament and a letter in the left he sits down again and knows, Tony did it on purpose.

The letter is empty and just says Thank you.  
The writing is scratchy and shaky and Gibbs knows it wasn’t long ago when Tony wrote it.

 

Gibbs takes Abbys flowers and smells on them, they still smell wonderful, and nothing has changed.

 

The sun shines and it is still a beautiful day but Gibbs knows that everything was without a reason.  
He doesn’t need to ask why, cause Tony surely has already done that.

What he notices fort he first time surprises him, because Tony never cried. He never complained. He would have had every reason to, but didn’t. He asks himself if Tony knew how much that showed that his own end didn’t bother him that much. 

 

Gibbs never expected it to end like this. 

 

He expected everything: That Tony would die by a bullet, a knife, of course on a case.

 

He would have bet on revenge, or even burglars.

 

Originally, he hoped Tony would die from age, peaceful.

 

He took everything as possibility: Murder, an explosion, a bullet gone wrong, a car accident.

 

He was prepared for everything.

 

Except this.

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry, for the story and for the mistakes. Every comment is great, and I could have gotten a lot wrong with the disease, I am not sure of the symptoms and if I offended someone I am really sorry.


End file.
